Bulldogs Head to Baltusrol for Ivy League Championships

Apr 22, 2010

Look to Capture First Title Since 2003

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale men's
golf team is heading to one of the most famous courses in golf to
take on the rest of the Ivy League in the annual Ivy League
Championship. The three-day event will begin on Friday, Apr.
23 and carry through the weekend. The Bulldogs come into the
event having won four tournaments this year and never having
finished worse than fifth.

The Bulldogs will be up against stiff competition this week as
Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn and Princeton
will all head to Baltusrol to try and claim their spot atop the Ivy
League. Penn comes in as the team to beat, after they won the
Caves Valley Intercollegiate last weekend. Also, look for
Harvard and Princeton to be near the top of the leader board come
Sunday.

This year's tournament will be hosted at the world-famous
Baltusrol Golf Club. Baltusrol has been the site of seven
U.S. Open Championships, two U.S. Women's Opens and the 2005
PGA Championship, which was won by Phil Mickelson. Jack
Nicklaus won the 1967 and 1980 U.S. Opens at Baltusrol and the
likes of Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, and Tiger Woods have all
walked the fairways of Baltusrol. The course is set at the
base of the Baltusrol Mountain in northern New Jersey. It
hosts two championship courses, an Upper and a Lower, both designed
by architect A.W. Tillinghast. The Lower Course is a par 72,
7,015-yard course with three signature holes: the fourth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth. The Upper Course is also a par
72, but measures 6,866 yards. The Upper Course has the
narrower fairways and greens, as it is built on the side of a
hill.

By all accounts the Bulldogs have had a spectacular
season. Yale won both its home tournaments, the MacDonald Cup
and Yale Spring Opener. The Bulldogs also took first at the
Princeton Invitational. Beyond that they finished second at
the Dartmouth Invitational, third at the Big Five in Philadelphia,
second at the George Washington Invitational, and tied for fifth at
the Caves Valley Spring Intercollegiate. If it were not for
their fifth place finish this past weekend against a number of Ivy
League teams, the Bulldogs would be the heavy favorites heading
into the weekend. As it stands, they still probably are.

The Bulldogs are being led right now by junior Thomas McCarthy,
who has won two tournaments this year as well as a second place
finish at last weekend's Caves Valley Intercollegiate.
McCarthy is getting a lot of help from his teammates though, as
senior captain Ben Wescoe, junior Brandon Marick, and freshmen Brad
Kushner and Carson Weinand all have been playing outstanding this
year. While McCarthy has won two tournaments, it has been a
bit of a revolving door at the top. All five of Yale's
players have the ability to go low and it seems like every week
there is a different player leading the charge.

The Bulldogs will tee-off Friday morning for a chance to claim
their first title in seven years.